I just don’t see how anyone who looked at the play the other night could objectively say he MEANT to run into that wall. He was pulling up even before he ran into it like he was trying to play a carom off the wall. I think this was a situation more akin to not being aware of his surroundings than him ‘playing too hard’. Comes with inexperience at the position (that was his 6th game in RF this entire season). Maybe I’m totally wrong, but I don’t think you’ll see many more plays like this from him again in the future.

Exactly, he ran into the wall by accident, but he’s trying to spin it as going all out to avoid embarrassment. He’d be better off saying it was the lights or something like that that made him disoriented.

Might as well own running into the wall rather than try to “fool” everybody. Put the thing to bed by saying, “Man, I expected to run into the rookie wall LAST year”

While I’ll be the first to admit that Harper is an all-out hustle type of guy, I think we need to dispense with the myth that he crashed into the wall the other day as part of some “whatever it takes, play each day like its your last” attitude. Unlike many other full-speed wall smashes, where the player is making a play on the ball (looking at you Aaron Rowand), video evidence looks pretty convincing that Harper had started to slow down to play the ball off the wall, and either lost his bearings or had his depth perception messed up by the video board.

It had about as much never-say-die hustle as someone walking into a parked car while on their cellphone.

He sees the ball is out of reach, then he is looking right at the wall for at least 3-4 steps- so he sees what is coming!

He could have at least held his arms out or something- instead he puts his big-ego-head out there to get it wrecked and get a cool scar and show some blood so he can live up to the ridiculous hype that the press has put upon him.

He’s a kid trying to impress everyone, knows his team is underachieving this season, and wants to draw some attention away from that fact.